What an unholy mess this Conservative Government has made of the governance of this country. If you cast your mind back to when Tony Abbott was the Opposition Leader he spent the whole four years entirely devoted to the destruction of Labor. He achieved it and some say he was the best Opposition Leader ever. (Whatever the criteria was I have never understood). But in doing so he came to the job without policies and without a plan for Australia’s future. Since 7 September 2013 not a clear narrative have we heard from anyone in the Coalition.

Abbott, like all conservatives believed that just being in power would be sufficient to erase Australia’s problems. He lived in a fool’s paradise with no answers to the difficulties we will confront in the future. The future of jobs, of the rising cost of health, of pensions, the future with climate change, the future need for equality of opportunity, particularly in schools and the need for infrastructure policy with a growing population. Indeed population itself.

An observation.

“The ideas of today need to be honed with critical reason, factual evidence and scientific methods of enquiry so that they clearly articulate the currency of tomorrow.”

We thought that the answer might have come with the emergence of Malcolm Turnbull. Sure he did us a favour with the removal of Tony Abbott but he has since, by his capitulation to the extreme right-wing of his party, proven that he is in fact one of them.

Like Abbott he too came to power without a thought for the future, only for his desire of self-fulfilment. Now he governs like a leader not knowing his left hand from his right. He and his ministers, even after four years in power, continually blame Labor for every failure from the smallest thing to the largest.

It’s the same in  the US with the Republicans having had 7 years to construct a health bill and when the time came to present it they were found wanting. Especially as they came up with a plan that would see 25million of the poorest people without insurance. They had spent the 7 years trying to bring down Obamacare without having a ready-made replacement. What fools they are.

We have a government in survival mode governing in an ad hoc manner on a day-to-day basis. It makes decisions depending on the crisis of the day. No energy plan so blame Labor for closing Hazelwood. Announce an enquiry about the cost of power. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t report for 12 months.

Announce a dubious Snowy Hydro scheme. It doesn’t matter how it fits into a non-existing National Energy plan. I mean what sort of Government would suddenly discover it didn’t have one.  All they are doing now is creating the illusion that you are doing something.

Bill Shorten doesn’t do anything other than reinforce all the negativity. He is good at doing it too. Malcolm Turnbull’s personal approval continues to languish and Tony Abbott is peaking around the corner waiting for another opportunity to tell everyone that there all his policies.

Meanwhile the Government gets further behind in the polls.

Alan Austin writing for the New Daily summed up their economic performance:

Late last Friday, Australia’s Treasury quietly released a nifty statistic. It revealed that government gross debt is now $483,080,000,000.00. That’s $483.1 billion.

Of this, $213.1 billion has been added by the Coalition since the 2013 election. This is more than the Labor governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard added in their six years and nine months.

In other words, the Abbott and Turnbull governments have now officially doubled Labor’s gross debt.

With the budget but weeks away the Government doesn’t even know it the Business tax breaks will go ahead. “We have a plan,” they said. Remember when everything was on the table? It was like a menu at a mad hatter’s convention. All you can say now is that the service is bloody awful.

An observation.

“The problem with leaving so much on the table is that you can leave an enormous mess to clean up later.”

We have had a sort of debate about 18c and what the protagonists want to say that they can’t say now has not yet been answered. What was that my mother said? “If you can’t say something nice then shut your mouth.”

If there is a plan maybe it involves a sustained character assassination of Bill Shorten, cancelling the tax cut and instead using the money to buy votes and put, with the Senates help, the changes to 18c in a lead box at the back of a remote store-room.

He has to cancel the tax cuts even at the risk of being hailed a back flipper. The reason is that he has no comeback to the very simple argument that you can’t possibly give handouts to the rich and privileged of this magnitude while at the same time taking from the poorest of society.

I hesitate to give Turnbull too much credit for having an actual strategy. I’ve done that before and come off badly.

If it is a strategy it is a recipe with so many ingredients that too much or too little of whatever will ruin the end result. If it retains the cuts in the budget knowing that the Senate would never pass them then we again have voodoo economics and the government stands to be accused of just bumbling along with no idea of what they are doing.

In my view the Prime Minister has about 6 months to show the electorate that he is a worthy leader of the nation. It’s a hard task when you are being told what to do by others, but do it he must.

Rarely in Australia do parties get less than six years in office meaning oppositions have the same in opposition? Surely 6 years is enough to put together a coherent plan for the future of the nation. If they don’t then they have been sitting on their arses at the taxpayer’s expense.

Day to Day Politics: Oh what a bloody mess they have made